


Calm Before The Storm

by littlegraybunny



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Children's Crusade Spoilers, Gen, M/M, Young Avengers: Children's Crusade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 15:33:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlegraybunny/pseuds/littlegraybunny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teddy can't watch Billy fall apart for much longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calm Before The Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during Billy's "lost months"--toward the end of Children's Crusade. Deals with his depression and the team's breakup.

Billy’s words… well, Teddy could admit it; they scared him. Billy had been quiet and withdrawn since Eli had told them the news of his departure—longer than that, even, and that in and of itself felt so wrong to Teddy. He couldn’t have expected Billy to be the same cheerful boy he’d been before all of it happened—before he’d found out who he really was, what he really was, and had the image of his lifelong heroes shattered before his eyes. Teddy could never have expected Billy to bounce back from that in a day—even a week. But he expected moping, the playing of sad music, maybe afternoons spent reading quietly on Billy’s bed instead of going out into the city. He hadn’t been prepared for his boyfriend to become a ghost, a thin shade of himself, who drifted room to room and place to place looking as if he didn’t know where he was and was too afraid to ask.

And he knew he wasn’t the only one who was shaken to the core by Billy’s words, muffled by the noise of activity around them and the smallness of his voice.

I’m the bad guy. And I have no business calling myself a Young Avenger.

He saw the haunted look on Kate’s face, and the way Eli shrunk back into himself, his shoulders curling down under his leather jacket. They all knew that if nothing else, Billy was always stolid with conviction, sure of himself and of his moral place. Seeing him so beaten made the entire group falter, weighted by a heaviness they hadn’t expected.

Tommy, in a way, was almost worse. Teddy could keep Billy by his side, at least, keep Billy’s hand in his and know that even if he wasn’t okay, he was there and physically safe. But Teddy knew that Tommy was ready to shake apart like a loosely-bolted racecar at any second. His frenetic movement was always there, hands flicking back and forth almost invisibly, eyes twitching from side to side, legs jumping and raring to go, to get away, to get anywhere. But as the two of them watched their team—their family—fall apart, Teddy watched Tommy change. It was like he had to go somewhere, and he didn’t know where. He was being pulled in so many different directions—far away, to Cassie and Jonas, to Scottsdale with Eli, to the Upper East Side with Kate, to oblivion with Billy. Teddy watched his hands shake almost imperceptibly fast as they raked through his hair, his lips buzzing with arguments, excuses for them to stay together, stay a team. Watching him settle with the idea of them splitting up made it worse for Teddy—knowing what he was losing, what they were all losing in not having each other. He knew they needed each other, if they had nothing else, but the team had always been like a force of nature to him, something wild and wonderful and perhaps brief that he could only hold onto until it dissipated around him.

Billy hardly responded to his mother when they got back to Billy’s that night, as she cried in relief that they were all home and safe, and held Billy close, her thin arms wrapped tightly around him. He put his head down against her and held her back, but Teddy could tell it was not out of the same relief to see her—his arms were limp, his back bowed to lean into her, his face devoid of expression where it rested against her shoulder. Like he was comforting a stranger.

Teddy wished he could tell Rebecca what had happened, why her son barely spoke anymore, if he did at all, and have her understand—understand what they’d seen, and done, and learned. He saw her desperately trying to get through to him, using what he knew were psychology tactics to get him to open up, which devolved into the desperate prodding of a worried mother when those failed. Teddy felt terrible for her, so displaced from everything that she couldn’t even try to sympathize. But none of them knew what to do—not even Teddy, which scared him, because he never felt like he was arrogant in thinking that no one knew Billy like he did, and no one could get through to him like Teddy could. But Rebecca stopped bringing in Billy’s little brothers to show him their crayon drawings from school when he barely reacted to their excitement, and Teddy stopped trying to bring up paltry topics of conversation in the hopes that Billy would react at all. Billy faced the wall when they slept together now, _if_ they did—which unnerved Teddy more than anything; being in the cold guest-room bed that was originally intended for him, with Tommy on the floor beside him, not even pretending to sleep, and no soft, calming rasps of Billy’s sleepy voice to placate him when nightmares gripped him in cold fingers in the night and wrestled him, sweating and panting and sometimes crying, from his sleep. Billy offered, at the very most, an incredibly hollow smile when Teddy or Tommy tried to lighten the mood in the room, which had nearly become a graveyard, with Billy sitting at the window like the statue of a mourning angel over a tomb, bowed over, still and silent.

And after so long, Teddy felt himself becoming hollow, too. As if his vitality and soul were being sucked away alongside Billy’s, as the weeks passed and he began to forget why he’d thought they might be able to keep it together with Cassie and Jonas and Eli gone. Tommy was disappearing more and more often, for hours and occasionally days. Teddy worried about him, always worried, and sometimes he even wondered if he was doing hero work behind their backs—as if Teddy would blame him, when the newscasts sometimes made him want to scream with the frustration of being trapped in the apartment and unable to help. But the time away from his twin seemed to do Tommy good, as if he could forget the bleakness of the Kaplan house altogether. Teddy almost envied him.

But more than that, it was watching his other half literally waste away in front of him. Some days he thought maybe Billy wasn’t even with them anymore. If, somehow, the acknowledgment of his own fear of himself—because that’s what it was, Billy had always been afraid of himself and his power, but now he was letting it consume him completely—was eating him alive, like a parasite, sucking him away slowly. Teddy felt like the only thing keeping him sane was his own efforts to get Billy to wake up, the little one-sided conversations he had while he sat next to Billy on the window seat and tried desperately to see what Billy was seeing in the empty sky outside the window. Some days he felt like he was talking to someone in a coma, and he pretended that, as if somehow Billy’s brain was recording everything and when he woke up he would remember that Teddy was always there, talking to him, touching him sometimes, loving him even if there was no person left to love.

“Mass Effect 3 is coming out soon,” he offered one day, as the two of them watched the sun dip below the skyline outside of Billy’s window. He reached over hesitantly and took Billy’s hand in his, running his thumbs over the back of Billy’s palm, touching each of the knuckles in turn. “Tommy wants to get it the weekend it comes out so we can finish it before the internet spoils it for us.”

Billy’s head turned a fraction in Teddy’s direction, and Teddy lamented that just that was enough to make his heart leap with joy, but a second later it turned back to the window, his expression even more neutral than before. Teddy sighed softly, but kept rubbing Billy’s hand.

“It’s supposed to be really nice this weekend, and your mom wants to take your brothers to the zoo. And us, too, if we want to go. Tommy got really excited about seeing giraffes for some reason, and he got all sad when I told him they don’t have any.”

Billy turned himself toward the window, jamming his knee up against the glass, and tugging his hand out of Teddy’s grasp. It hurt, a physical sting that started in Teddy’s heart and spread aching fingers across his chest and into his belly, but he knew he couldn’t push; not now, not this soon.

“I’ll leave you alone,” he murmured, resigned, and stood up, planting a hesitant but no less affectionate kiss on the side of Billy’s head before shuffling out of the room.

He tried not to let it hurt him, he really did. He knew, at the very least, that it wasn’t personal—Billy wasn’t pushing him away specifically, he was pushing everyone away. Which didn’t make the ignored conversations or deliberately unacknowledged gestures hurt any less, but he knew that if Billy was still in there at all, at least he still loved him. Teddy knew that. He hoped that. He prayed.

Maybe Billy had been having nightmares all along, just like the rest of them, but it wasn’t until weeks after they got home that Teddy started to notice them. Sometimes he could just hear Billy moaning through the wall, little keening whines of distress that would quiet down after ten minutes or so, and maybe pick up again later, or maybe not. At least Billy was sleeping, Teddy thought to himself. But seemingly without cause, they started getting worse—or, rather, they abruptly became worse. Teddy knew immediately that what woke him was Billy’s moaning, which was unusually loud coming through the wall, and when he pushed himself up and off the mattress Tommy was already lifting his head off his pillow, blinking blearily.

“Shut him up, will you?” Tommy moaned, rolling over, and Teddy stepped over him carefully to sneak out the door and into Billy’s room.

Billy was thrashing in his bed, kicking at the blankets, which were tangled in knots around his ankles, his fists knotting in the sheets and pulling, desperately, as if he was looking for purchase on a cliff face, in danger of falling. Teddy approached as carefully as he could, hearing Billy’s moans turning into coherent words, desperate and pleading, his breaths catching and sobbing in his throat.

“Don’t, don’t go, Ted,” he whined into his pillow, his voice hitching painfully. “Don’t leave me alone.”

The desperate pleading hit Teddy right in the knees, and he crumpled forward to kneel next to Billy’s bed, reaching out a gentle hand to rest on Billy’s arm, and then the back of his neck, rubbing there gently.

“I’m not leaving, Billy,” he murmured carefully, and Billy’s eyes dragged open, his chest hiccupping with his sobs, and he looked at Teddy, blearily. Teddy knew immediately that he wasn’t fully awake, and part of Teddy was glad for that, didn’t want to see Billy’s eyes go dead when they looked at him, didn’t want him to turn away.

His voice seemed to calm Billy, who moaned softly and laid back down onto his pillow, his eyes blinking twice before closing again.

“Don’t leave me alone,” he repeated, his voice softer and muffled by his pillow as he curled up under his sheet.

“I’m not leaving,” Teddy reassured him again, and Billy hummed softly before his furrowed brow loosened and his face slackened into sleep.

Teddy hated himself for being glad of it, glad that Billy was having nightmares too, but it was Billy feeling something other than the cold apathy he showed during the day, and Teddy secretly savored the small moments of Billy he got on those nights, as much as it hurt him that the moments were ones of panic and seemingly inconsolable sadness. He at least knew Billy was still in there, somewhere, maybe even listening to him. It was enough to keep him going, for a while. 

“It’s falling apart,” Teddy said to Kate one night over the phone, one of the nights when he felt the pressure on his chest like everything might tear him into pieces. “Everything… Billy’s just…”

“I know,” Kate responded, even though they both knew she didn’t.

“He’s catatonic, Katie,” Teddy said, hearing his own voice getting clogged with tears of frustration and getting up off the couch to go shut himself in the guest room so the Kaplans wouldn’t have to watch another child fall apart. “He stopped talking the other day. If he didn’t eat I would swear he was dead.”

“I don’t know what to do, Tedders,” Kate said quietly, after a long moment of Teddy breathing hard into the receiver, swallowing tears. “I can’t… we can’t go back out there. Not without Cassie—”

Teddy heard her voice hitch on the other end of the phone, and it was enough to make his tears finally come, and from the soft sighs in his ear he knew they were crying together, crying for everything they’d lost.

“I miss her so much,” Kate finally said, her voice so soft that Teddy barely heard her.

“I miss her too, Katie,” he said. “I miss everyone. I miss our family. Eli… has he called you?”

Kate swallowed audibly. “Mm… he called last night. He seems okay. He told me to say hi to you guys. Asked about Billy.”

Teddy coughed out a laugh, and it sounded harsh and wry in his ears. “Tell him he can come and see for himself,” he said, and he knew it was too much because their conversation was short after that, and Kate hung up with only a soft goodbye. He texted her an “I love you” later that night, as he fell asleep, and when he received her reply in the morning, he only had to think about how low he’d sunk that love was so hard to come by now, when he wouldn’t have thought anything of it a month ago, when his family had still been whole.

Eli called Teddy himself two weeks later. Teddy went into the hall to answer, away from where the family—minus Billy, always minus Billy—was watching television.

“…Hey, man,” he said, and his voice was quieter than he meant it to be.

“Hey,” Eli said, and he sounded the same, which was somehow worse. “How’s life?”

Teddy almost laughed at the question, how Eli could even ask it, and he wondered for a wild minute whether this was a pity call, and Eli was really having tons of fun in Scottsdale without them.

“…It’s cocks, man,” Teddy said after a while, shaking his head.

“Thought you liked those,” Eli replied, with tentative, wry humor, and for a horrible, wonderful moment, Eli was his best friend again and they were just talking, as if the ground weren’t blanketed with eggshells.

“No, these are bad cocks. Gross ones. With syphilis.”

“Fuck,” Eli said, and it was almost a cough. “That bad?”

Teddy sighed. “I don’t know what Kate told you.”

“…Nothing great.”

“Yeah, well. Billy’s basically catatonic. Has been since you left. Tommy’s… I dunno. And Kate… I haven’t even seen Kate, in like a month. Shit’s… shit’s fallen apart, man. We’re a mess up here.”

Eli was silent for so long, Teddy worried he’d hung up. “’M sorry, man,” he finally said, and it was hollow, as if he knew that Teddy knew that it wasn’t enough.

“Yeah,” was all Teddy could think to say.

“Wish I could be there,” Eli said quietly, and it made something well up in Teddy, something ugly.

“Do you?” he replied, and it sounded harsh even to him, and he wanted to take it back but part of him was glad, because Eli could be here, if he wanted, facing down this monster that they were facing, their insurmountable grief.

“I do,” Eli insisted, with an impatient sigh. “Don’t… don’t pin that on me, man. I didn’t want to abandon you guys. That’s not what it was.”

“I know, I know,” Teddy sighed, rubbing his forehead, behind which a headache was forming now. “I just… fuck, Eli. I feel like you just escaped it all. Like we’re stuck here, dealing with this, and you just… got away. I dunno.”

“I didn’t,” Eli said, and his tone was grave. “I didn’t get away. It fucking sucks, and… and I wish I could do something for you guys. Is Billy…?”

Teddy didn’t know what Billy was anymore. He didn’t even know what he was. “Billy’s… practically gone. I don’t… it’s like he’s in a coma. I don’t even know if he can hear me anymore.”

“You’ve always been able to talk to him, man,” Eli said softly. “He’s… he’s your guy. I mean, you guys… you’re the rock. Didn’t matter what the fuck else was going on, you guys always had it together. Kept me going, sometimes. Knowing I could… depend on something.”

Teddy’s sigh was brittle, at best. “Really?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Eli said. “I know you can get him out of it, man. Maybe you’ve gotta go all Teddy ‘Tough Love’ Altman on his ass. It got me on the straight and narrow more than once, right?”

Teddy took a deep breath, and for once it felt like it filled him up, relaxed him a little. “Yeah, maybe,” he said. “Where were you two fucking months ago, man?” he asked, but not without humour. “I needed your Leader Wisdom.”

“Burnin’ my ass off in the desert, man,” Eli groused. “’S fuckin’ hot out here.”

They laughed for a moment, and Teddy actually felt it bubbling in his chest, making him smile.

The call bolstered him in a way he didn’t think it would. He felt better, knowing that Eli was right, that it wasn’t just him trying to convince himself that he could do something, that he had the power to do something. He and Billy were always good, they always had been, and they’d always had each other. It wasn’t different now, just because Billy was far away. Teddy was still here, even if Billy wasn’t receptive. And he could do something.

He didn’t go in with any specific intention. He knew what he wanted to say, and believed in his ability to say it, he just wasn’t sure what it would have to come to, to make Billy respond. He didn’t dwell on it, because Eli was right—Teddy had always been able to talk to Billy. It was always easy with him.

“Billy,” he said into the dark, watching the city lightly glitter on the side of Billy’s face. “It’s been months.”

The admission shocked even him, as if he hadn’t quite been aware of how long it had been since Eli had left, since he’d last talked to Billy, touched him, been kissed by him. He reached over and flipped on the light switch, so Billy would have to see his face, everything he knew was showing in it.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “I’ve tried to be patient, and supportive… but—” his voice caught in his throat, and for once he wasn’t talking to a coma patient, he was begging with Billy, with his boyfriend. “You need to talk to me,” he pleaded. “Or Wanda—or _someone_ —right now.”

He saw Billy move, just slightly—a flinch, maybe, and it startled him. Part of Teddy hadn’t even wanted to expect a reaction, and suddenly he was getting one, however pitifully small, and that in itself was so sad, that Teddy moved a little bit into the room. “No, I take that back,” he said, his voice a hard ball in his throat. “You need to talk to me.”

And then suddenly, Billy was moving, swiveling around to look at Teddy, and his eyes were so painfully sad, and tired, and devoid of spirit, with dark smudges like bruises underneath, his brow furrowed, rough patches of facial hair around his jaw. He looked into Teddy’s eyes, which nearly made Teddy’s heart stop—and how hard had things gotten, that mere eye contact was like the first sips of water after days in the desert—and Billy’s whole body rose and shook with a sigh that seemed to come from his furthest depths.

“I’m sorry,” Billy said, his voice rough and hard from disuse, cracking over his words and faltering, as if he had forgotten how to speak altogether. His body shrunk back as he spoke, radiating sadness and regret, as if he expected Teddy to lash out at him, and Teddy felt the pain of that so acutely, he nearly reeled back.

Everything that Teddy had come in to say left his mind in that moment, and he felt himself softening, though not enough to deter him, and it finally felt safe to approach Billy, to stand right next to him, knowing that Billy wouldn’t turn away this time.

“You should be,” he said, careful to make his tone gentle, to soften his voice with understanding. “Because if I’ve learned nothing else from all this, I know now that life is way too short for you to be sitting here, wasting yours.” He added, after a moment, firmly, “and mine.”

Billy’s immediate reaction to those words almost made Teddy take them back, though he knew they needed to be said, because Billy’s entire body flinched from them, and his eyes slid closed, as if forced by a heavy blanket of weight that pushed his head down and made his shoulders sag. Teddy could see him going back into himself, and he knelt down next to Billy, desperate not to let it happen.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Billy muttered, in what had to be the smallest, saddest tone Teddy had ever heard from his boyfriend, who was usually so full of confidence and conviction. Teddy realized suddenly that it must have been that all along, or at least part of it. Billy’s resignation spoke volumes of how he’d been expecting this, as if he’d practiced the question in his head, and maybe even what he would say to what he had thought was Teddy’s inevitable answer. Teddy felt his heart break for Billy, and he leaned in, resting his hands on Billy’s knees; a small gesture, but more intimate than they’d shared in what seemed like forever.

“And give you yet another reason to sit in the dark doing nothing?” Teddy said softly, because his throat was full of emotion, clogged with it, and the whisper was all he could force out. “Sorry, Kaplan, you’re stuck with me. ‘Till death do us part.”

Billy heard the words at the same time Teddy did, and he turned his head up so that their eyes met in mutual disbelief of what Teddy had just said. But Teddy wasn’t about to apologize or take it back, when it felt better saying that than it had saying any of the paltry things he’d said in the last two months. It felt undeniably right, and he saw that spark in Billy’s eyes, finally, finally—that little flicker that meant Billy was hearing him, truly hearing him, and Teddy nearly cried from relief.

“Teddy Altman,” Billy said, his voice small, but it was so beautiful to hear his own name in Billy’s voice, and he drank it in eagerly. “Did you just propose to me?”

“Depends,” Teddy answered, hearing the tears in his own voice, but he didn’t have to answer, he knew, because he was seeing in Billy’s eyes that he knew what had just happened, that he’d felt the shift between them, and he knew Billy was seeing the same thing in Teddy’s. “Are you gonna get off your ass and do something?”

Teddy was unprepared for Billy to surge into his arms then, his knees awkwardly knocking into Teddy’s chest as he put his arms around Teddy’s neck. And that was it for Teddy—it had been so long, too long, since he’d felt Billy’s hands or arms around him, since he’d felt Billy pressed against him. He dragged them both up to stand, so that he could pull Billy closer, an arm around his back, pressing their chests close together, until he could feel Billy’s heartbeat against him and Billy could feel his. Billy gasped wetly against his shoulder, and Teddy grasped him tighter, holding most of Billy’s weight in his arms, supporting him. 

When Billy pulled back, for a second Teddy’s stomach dropped, but then there were warm, chapped lips against his, mouthing at him eagerly, desperately. With a gasp he opened his mouth to Billy, dragging a hand back through Billy’s overgrown hair, his fingertips resting at the nape of his neck as Billy’s arms pulled him closer, his tongue flicking into Teddy’s mouth, where Teddy eagerly brushed back with his own. Billy’s body was so warm against his, the elegant dip of his waist under Teddy’s hand, his long fingers gripping in Teddy’s hair, and it was simultaneously as if they’d been apart for years and never been apart at all. Billy’s breath in his mouth made Teddy almost dizzy, drunk with Billy’s affection after so long without it, and Teddy swore he’d never let Billy go again—

_Tap tap tap!_

Billy was the first to pull away, turning with a start toward the window, where Miss Marvel was smirking at them through the glass, her blonde hair making a wild, wind-swept halo around her head in the light of Billy’s room.

“Sorry to interrupt, boys,” she said, her voice only slightly muffled by the glass. “But Cap needs you at the mansion.”

Teddy was both overjoyed at the prospect of going back to the mansion—by _invitation_ —and disappointed that he couldn’t keep holding Billy indefinitely. “But—” he started.

“In uniform,” she added.

It was Billy’s turn to falter, his hand sliding down to rest on Teddy’s arm. “But—” he said.

“ _Now,_ ” Miss Marvel insisted, and with a flash of her lightning insignia she was gone, and there was no longer any room for argument.

Billy and Teddy looked back at each other, and Teddy saw in Billy’s face a measure of fear that he desperately didn’t want to be there.

“What do you think he wants?” Billy asked, his hand gripping in the fabric of Teddy’s shirt. Teddy realized he wasn’t holding Billy up anymore, that Billy was standing on his own, and the sight of it filled Teddy with joy.

“I dunno,” he said, rubbing Billy’s side a little, reassuringly. “Only one way to find out, right?”

“I—I don’t know if I can, Ted,” Billy half-whispered, that fear gripping his voice and making it soft. “Putting on that uniform again… I just—it just feels—I mean, I don’t know if I should.”

Teddy slowed himself down from his excitement, keeping his eyes on Billy’s, and brushing Billy’s hair away from his face so he could rest their foreheads together, force himself into Billy’s bubble of withdrawn fear. 

“You’re still scared,” Teddy said, and it wasn’t a question, so Billy didn’t answer. “But everyone’s scared. We’re all scared. I know I am.”

Billy huffed for a moment, as if he couldn’t believe Teddy would be afraid of anything. Teddy had always wondered that he be could be something like that in Billy’s eyes.

“Hey, I am. I’m scared of our team falling apart forever. I’m scared of losing you again. Terrified. But a hero puts on his cape and gets out there anyway. Right?”

Billy took another deep sigh that seemed to rattle him from within, as if he was glass-fragile. Teddy hummed and kissed his forehead, feeling liberated at the ability to do so.

“And, hey. Best part is you never, ever have to do it alone.”

“I’d never want to,” Billy said, with a smile that was still sad, but more full of hope than Teddy had bothered to be for a long time.


End file.
